He Who Sits Inside Your Head
by Brambleshadow of WindClan
Summary: John Smith is once again the Doctor and has dealt with the Family of Blood. There's just one little problem: Zagreus never left. [Dark!Doctor, post-Family of Blood]


Heavily based of the Big Finish Eighth Doctor audio _Zagreus_. As of now it's just a one-shot; I wanted to toy with the idea of Zagreus never having left. You _can_ read this without having listened to the audio, though.

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He Who Sits Inside Your Head

* * *

The Doctor walked up the hill to his TARDIS where Martha was waiting for him in the rain. He'd dealt with the Family of Blood the night before and had just finished trying to convince Joan Redfern to come traveling with him without success.

"Right then. Molto bene," he said.

"How was she?" Martha asked.

He didn't really want to give her a straight answer to that. "Time we moved on."

"If you want I could go and—"

"Time we moved on," the Doctor repeated.

"Er, I meant to say," Martha said quickly as he brushed past her and stuck the TARDIS key in the door, "back there, last night. I would have said anything to get you to change."

He turned back towards her. "Oh yeah, of course you would, yeah."

"I mean, I wasn't really—"

"Oh no, no."

"Good."

"Fine."

There was an awkward pause.

"So, here we are, then," Martha said.

"There we are, yes. And I never said: Thanks for looking after me," the Doctor told her warmly, sincerely. He stepped forward and hugged her.

The Time Lord released her at the sound of Tim Latimer's voice: "Doctor. Martha."

"Tim Timothy Timber!" the Doctor said.

Latimer stayed a couple inches back. "I just wanted to say goodbye. And thank you. Because I've seen the future and I now know what must be done. It's coming, isn't it? The biggest war ever."

"You don't have to fight," Martha said.

"I think we do."

"But you could get hurt!"

"Well so could you," Latimer said with a nod at the Doctor, "traveling around with him, but it's not going to stop you."

The Doctor's hand, meanwhile, had dug around in his coat pocket and pulled something out. "Tim," he said, "I'd be honored if you'd take this." And he handed the boy the fob watch.

Latimer held it in his palm for a few seconds, concentrating, then looked up at the Doctor. "I can't hear anything."

"No, it's just a fob watch now. But keep it with you for good luck."

"Look after yourself," Martha told the boy before giving him a hug and a kiss on the cheek and then disappearing into the TARDIS.

"You'll like this," the Doctor told Latimer, following Martha into his Ship. Moments later, it dematerialized.

After visiting an elderly Tim Latimer at the memorial, the Time Lord and his human companion headed back into the TARDIS. Martha watched as the Doctor moved around the console, sent the timeship into the Vortex. Something about his movements always had her unable to take her eyes off him—maybe it was the way his hands would occasionally stroke the console before reaching for a particular control, or even simply his handling of the machine. In any case, it wasn't long before the now-familiar sound of the time rotor moving filled the air and the TARDIS dematerialized.

Martha removed the poppy from her shirt and set it inside one of the Doctor's coat pockets—his coat was currently slung over one of the coral beams not far from the door. She turned back at the Doctor's sharp, sudden gasp. His skin looked pale, paler than normal, and his eyes…

"Doctor? Doctor, what's wrong?" Was it possible something had gone wrong when his Time Lord self had gone back to its body? "Let me help you."

"Stay away!" he snapped at her, stepping back to the edge of the wire mesh platform.

"Doctor…" Concerned, Martha moved toward him.

"I said keep away!"

"Have you been injured or something?" She stayed back, wary now, yet wanting to do what she could to help him.

He wouldn't look at her now, and that set her even more on edge. "Injured?" he said softly. "No, I've not been injured."

"So then what—"

"When I opened the fob watch, a tiny piece of the fiercest, fizziest energy escaped. Anti-time, if you will, though it's a crude term for such a matter of life… and death. But now that the problem of the Family has been resolved… now that _I've_ been resolved… all that remained of that reality is here."

Martha _really_ didn't like the way he was speaking to her—his voice soft, nearly maniac. And he _still_ wasn't looking at her. She swallowed nervously. "What, in the TARDIS? How can it be in the TARDIS? You were in the cottage when you changed back—"

His low laugh stopped her mid-sentence. "No, no," the Doctor said in a whisper, pointing to his head. "In _here_."

( _And his moment, time's undoing_ … she thought she heard a voice say.)

Martha licked her lips and stepped back. "Y-you're scaring me now, Doctor." Another step, toward the door. She'd forgotten that they were in the Vortex; at the moment, all she wanted was to get _away_ from him. "Stop it. Please."

She hadn't seen what he'd done to the Family of Blood, hadn't asked, hadn't wanted to know. But this… He wouldn't hurt her. He _wouldn't._

"Doctor? Doctor…" He looked at her then, head tilted at an unnatural angle. "I hold the last vestiges of the most awesome power ever imagined. Imagined… yes. I've done it once before so why not again? Take my title from the work of imagination? A creature willed into being by the undying anger of an unreal, now-dead race!"

Martha's mouth had long since gone dry. "Right, Doctor, I have no idea what you're going on about, but I _really_ think you need help, so if you'll excuse me I'll just—"

The shock of the sting and the force of the blow sent her sprawling to the floor. "Ow!" Martha rubbed her cheek where she'd been slapped, angrily glared up at him. "Doctor, what's _wrong_ with you?! Stop it _right_ now!"

There was no warmth in his brown eyes as he looked down at her. For a moment, she thought she saw constellations swirling in their depths. Then she blinked and they were their normal brown color. "I told you, girl," he growled, his voice echoing and sounding strangely distorted, "I am _not_ the Doctor! I am become he who sits inside your head, he who lives among the dead." His voice dropped into a whisper, one that was no less distorted. "He who sees you in your bed and eats you when you're sleeping." He took a step forward, then another. "I am become _ZAGREUS!_ "


End file.
